As fund managers struggle to increase their investment returns, reduce their costs, and satisfy growing regulatory demands they are quickly embracing an old concept — data management — albeit with a new twist. Implementing the so-called investment book of record, or IBOR for short, has become a de facto requirement for fund managers who need […]
Automating Corporate Actions: Four Ways to Generate Successful ROI
Automating the handling of corporate actions should be a given, considering the financial risk fund managers, broker-dealers and banks face if they make just one mistake. Apparently that’s not necessarily so. The reason: justifying the expense to C-level management isn’t as easy as it sounds, despite the need for automation being greater than ever before. […]
FINRA’s CARDS: Time to Get Ready
The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s proposal to collect megatons of customer account information is far from being implemented, but behind the scenes, operations, technology and data management specialists are rushing to make the necessary preparations for the first phase expected in 2015. The reason: despite all the lobbying against the initiative coined CARDS, short for […]
Europe’s Consolidated Tape: Reality or Pipedream?
While the European Parliament has finally voted its support for the new version of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), one of its most controversial goals — establishing a central source of post-trade prices from regulated markets — is still far from fruition. The new MiFID mandate may include some stepping-stone dates, but the language of […]
Bad European Data Validation Rules Give Banks Reporting Jitters
It’s hard enough for bank operations and financial reporting specialists to fill out all the data points and formats required by regulators in filing mandatory documentation evidencing financial soundness. But when a major banking regulatory watchdog — the European Banking Authority — issues 290 incorrect data validation rules, the whole reporting process can go awry […]
“Let Us Do It”: Data Utilities Target Mid-Office Data Drudgery
Data utility — it’s a buzzword, which has cropped up sporadically in the data management arena and is now making a comeback, albeit in diverse flavors. The latest wave of incarnations: a reference data utility launched by IBM and GoldenSource, and a know-your-customer (KYC) data utility disclosed by global messaging network SWIFT. Their unveilings earlier this […]
Validating NAVs: An Ounce of Prevention Saves a Lot of Grief
Net asset value, or NAV for short: it’s a basic calculation which hundreds of mutual and other investment fund managers have to make each day to allow investors to know just how much they will pay to buy and sell shares or units. While the timetable for when the figure must be struck might differ, […]
Private Equity Market: Can New Data Standards Win?
Adoption of new standards, particularly when its voluntary and not driven by regulation, can take a long while to get from “nice idea” to a baseline necessity for doing business. Ask global network SWIFT which helped create ISO message types for communication information on payments, foreign exchange transactions and finally post-trade instructions for banks and […]
Hedge Fund Managers: Taming the Data Headache
It’s a given that hedge fund managers consume data — and lots of it — to ensure the most lucrative trading strategies and efficient post-trade processes. They need to know just how the global market is moving at every fraction of a second every business day and just which transactions must be cleared and settled […]
Legal Entity Identifiers: Scrutiny of EU Firms Tightens
When the concept of a new global legal entity identifier first took shape among regulators in the US and across the globe, it was hailed as a brilliant revolutionary move. Financial firms and trading counterparties could now be appropriately identified and tracked by regulators seeking to mitigate systemic risk. No longer would they have to […]